


In Our Bedroom After the War

by Missakat



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, this game was a rollercoaster
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:49:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missakat/pseuds/Missakat
Summary: Of love, loss, and forgiveness.A post-game introspection.
Relationships: Dina & Ellie (The Last of Us), Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 54





	1. Day ???

A fever took her with chilling heat, after Santa Barbara. The all consuming rage that had driven her here, that had numbed the pain of a hole in her side, it had drained away as she held Abby beneath the grey waves. It left her empty, and cold, and she barely remembers how she got from that desolate beach to the empty building where she collapsed. 

Her feverish mind conjures memories, her hands coated in blood, as they press to the hot flesh and hasty stitches at her side, against the arrow lodged in Dina’s shoulder, against the mess of guts and gore that was Joel’s abdomen. 

Her thoughts drip like sludge through her brain, begging them to wake up, to stay with her. Her arm is broken and useless at her side, beaten and bloody and sobbing over the unconscious form of the woman she loves. She’s fourteen, and tiny, and barely strong enough to help Joel limp away from the shell of the university lab. She’s sitting next to her best friend, her arm stinging with a fresh bite mark. 

She’d spent that winter nursing Joel back to health, but theres no intrepid daughter figure to find Ellie medicine for her side, and the sensation of soft hands caressing her face, dark eyes fluttering as Dina presses kisses to her brow, are merely hallucinations. Theres no one sitting beside her, waiting for their world to end.

When she wakes up, fever broken, throat burning with thirst and choking on the dry dust of a home long since left to ruin, she’s alone. 

———————————————

Theres a dark plume of smoke streaking the horizon as Ellie emerges from the shack. 

Her side aches with every movement, but when she peels aside the crusted bandage, she finds the broken skin no longer burns with infection. Her pack is torn open, her things scattered, as she dimly recalls half dragging herself into the building and fumbling through it for the medicine she pilfered from the Rattler’s camp. The bitter taste of the antibiotics still lingers on the back of her tongue, downed dry before she passed out leaning against the wall.  
  
Ellie collects her things, retracing steps through the thick coating of dust. She ignores the throb in her hand, the phantom twitches of fingers that no longer exist.

  
Ellie half remembers tying the dingy to a half sunken dock near the shack, and she breaths a sigh of relief when she finds the boat rocking gently in the surf. Some kind of fate must be smiling on her, for a gentle breeze could have dislodged the knots. Ellie shoves her backpack into the unsteady boat, and leaves behind the burning ruin. 

———————————————

  
She’s not sure what keeps her going, on the long trek back to Jackson. For so long she’d been driven by the hot coal of hatred in her gut, but now the absence of that heat left her a burnt out shell. Ellie is empty, no more human than the shambling infected that roam the lands. 

But where her mind feels ready to sink into quiet nothingness, her body moves on autopilot. Ellie was nothing if not a fighter, and not even the depths of depression could quell her instincts, her drive to survive. She pulls out a map and sets her course, mind as quiet as the gentle rolling waves. She follows the coast, then takes the Santa Clara River inland, and when the dingy’s engine finally putters out, she pulls herself out of it on shaking limbs and begins to walk. 


	2. Jackson, Day 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie arrives in Jackson.

Its early summer she finds herself on a familiar path dappled with fresh hoof prints. 

She’d avoided people both healthy and infected on her journey back towards Jackson. The gnarled scar on her hip still sometimes aches, a bitter reminder of the depravity to which some humans had fallen. It feels wrong to follow the tracks instead of turn the opposite direction, but the valley she’d begun to descend had been her home for years. Jackson felt wrong, without Joel, then without Jesse, but now she ached for something familiar. 

When a rider appears before her on the path, she comes to a stumbling halt. Her heart rises to her throat, beating anxiously, the strongest emotion she’s felt in months. She almost chokes on the feeling. 

Distracted by her sudden anxiety, Ellie misses their sudden alarm. They shout at the sight of her, and when they raise their rifles Ellie realizes she looks no better than the infected the scouts are patrolling for. She carefully raises her hands, in greeting or an attempt at placating the potential hostility, even she isn’t sure. She realizes she should probably try to school her face into some sort of expression. She can barely manage tired, disused muscles in her face creaking. 

The pair approaches, caution melting away as they realize she’s human, and making no move to arm herself despite the arsenal at her back. The leading scout has a fresh look about him, a youthful face she doesn’t immediately recognize. He kicks his horse into a trot, despite the protest of the older woman behind him, and pulls to a stop a comfortable distance from her. He beams at her, all trust and excitement.  
  
They should have learned, after Abby, to be wary of unknowns. But at its core, Jackson was built on the concept of good will between men. She hopes this boy never has to lose that smile. 

He begins chattering at her, but she practically flinches at the sound. She can barely process the words, can’t quite figure out how to translate her own jumbled thoughts into coherent sentences after months of being alone, when the older woman finally gets close enough to get a good look at Ellie.   
  
“Holy shit, Ellie?!”

———————————————

The woman is Alyssa, an old friend of Maria’s and an integral part of Jackson since its inception. Ellie had spent some time with her in the stables; much of Jackson’s herd was sourced from the small ranch she’d retired to pre-outbreak, and the woman took great pride in caring for the horses. With her was Benny, a cheery trainee recently cleared for paired patrols. He was chattering something vaguely friendly and welcoming, but he pauses and stares at her wide eyed. Alyssa quickly hops down from her horse, but she slows her approach when she sees Ellie’s wide eyed panic. 

“Ellie?” she asks, and Ellie struggles to find her voice after months of solitude and silence. 

“Hey-“ she starts, but her voice cracks with disuse. She coughs, trying and failing to clear her throat. 

“Can I…?” Alyssa slowly places a hand on Ellie’s arm, and Ellie struggles to process the influx of emotions elicited by the touch. 

Something in her snarls, the instincts that refused to let her curl in a ball and let the world take her. _Contact is bad_ , it whispers, _too close TOO close, close enough to attack close enough to rip and tear and hurt._ But it struggles, hissing against the familiarity of these woods, of Alyssa’s worn face, of the sweet summer air and the snorting breaths of the horses. 

Something in her chest, long sunken in the ashen remains of _rage pain grief,_ flutters awake, and she _yearns_ for home. 

Ellie leans into the touch, something in her releasing as calloused hands catch her in an embrace.

———————————————

Ellie didn’t realize she’d passed out until she wakes up. She stares at the ceiling, head jumbled. Her brow scrunches, trying to catch thoughts that scatter like shadows in a beam of light. 

She carefully takes in the sensations, with mental clarity she hadn’t felt in months. She starts with the ceiling. It’s muted gray with a hairline crack tracing over to the wall, and the bright light beaming in through the window is just starting to turn orange with sunset. She’s laying on a bed that feels like a cloud after months of roughing it. Theres the soft scratch of the blankets on her legs, the prick at her elbow from an I.V. strung up above her. 

Theres a weight at her side, a warm spot that she disturbs with her movement. Dina shifts with a sigh, arms pillowed under her head, and Ellie marvels at the way the light falls over her dark curls. She’s staring at heavy lashes when they flutter, and deep brown eyes blink open. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gotta love inventing npcs to flesh out the world a little bit.


	3. Jackson, Day 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Dina, reunited.

For a long minute, it seemed neither Ellie nor Dina knew what to say.

In the quiet, lonely moments on her trip out to Santa Barbara, when the burning in her gut was quieted by fatigue and she had to stop and rest, Ellie had tried to draw Dina in her journal. But like sand wears away even the strongest stone, each step away from Jackson seemed to dull her memory of Dina’s face, the same way it had muddled Joel’s, then Jesse’s. Never quite able to capture the details, and each subsequent illustration tainting her recollection further.

So Ellie stared, drinking in her radiant face. Wisps of dark curls freed from her bun, framing the freckles dusting her cheeks, darkened by the summer sun. The sweet curve of her lips, parted with the quiet awe of waking. Ellie finds Dina’s eyes again, their dark depths moving across Ellie’s own face, until their roving movement stops. Their eyes meet.  
  
Dina looks away first, eyes dropping down to where Ellie’s hand lays over the covers. She gently takes it into her own. Her skin is dry, and warm, but Ellie can’t prevent a slight wince when she brushes over the stumps of her missing fingers. Her hands twitch, phantom pain flaring in the empty space, but the sensation calms when Dina runs her thumb across Ellie’s hand in a soothing motion. 

“I thought you were dead,” Dina says, not looking at Ellie. She stares resolutely down, as if trying to focus on the scars and not the person who bore them. She finds the crescent shape indented into the heel of Ellie’s palm, tracing it with her thumb.

  
“It’s awful but, part of me hoped that you were.” She lets out a breath, a dry sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Unshed tears began to glitter on her lashes. 

“I was so, so _angry_ with you. For walking out, for leaving me and our _son.”_

Dina’s hands are shaking. 

“I couldn’t let myself think about what would happen if you came back,” A dark spot appears on the bedspread, as a tear falls from her eye. “How… how could I…” 

“I’m sorry.” Dina looks up at the dry whisper of Ellie’s voice, brown eyes brimming with tears. 

“I’m so sorry, Dina.” Tears clog Ellie’s already damaged voice. They flow freely down Dina’s face, now. “I know I can’t ever make it up to you, but I’m so sorry.” 

Ellie takes a breath, chest heaving as she tries to breath around oncoming sobs. 

“I’m so sorry Dina,” she chokes on the words, on her tears, on the emptiness clawing her in two. “I love you so much.” 

A warm hand brushes the tears from her cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hand is warm when she cups Ellie’s cheek. Ellie blinks away tears, taking in Dina’s face. Her brow is furrowed, cheeks damp as she worries her lip between her teeth. She looks conflicted, relief, love, despair, and hurt competing in her eyes.

“Is it done?” Dina asks.   
  
Ellie hesitates. She feels the cold surf, salt water stinging her wounds as hot red drips from her hand. It _throbs_ , in time with her heartbeat, in time with the fighting pulse she holds beneath the waves. She comes back to herself, her hand suddenly clutching Dina’s like a lifeline. Dina stares at her, stares into her soul.

“Yes.” Ellie says.

There’s more to say. Ellie knows it. Dina knows it. But the words aren’t ready to come out yet, still stuck somewhere deep down inside. And for the moment, that’s where they’ll stay.

“Ok.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're not done yet, kids.
> 
> I hope people are chill with short chapters, I'd rather get things posted so I can't dwell too long on little things. It seems to be the best way to keep myself writing, I really want to see this plot bunny through. I might condense chapters and put more work into cleaning things up once it's all written, we'll see.


	4. Chapter 4

Ellie glares at her reflection in the mirror. 

She’s in the bathroom of her small room in Jackson’s hospital. It’s a small building, quickly being outgrown by the community is services.

She’s the lone patient, for the moment, accompanied only by the nurse Cecilia. She’s an older woman, who somehow managed to hold onto kindness despite the harsh world they live in. But her warmth by no means makes her weak, and Ellie had caught glimpses of the edge hidden beneath her comfortably worn face. 

Ellie once sprained her ankle on patrol, due to her own recklessness. Cecelia wrapped the sprain, and calmly scolded Ellie in a low voice that impacted her far more than Joel’s concerned yelling. It was overwhelming, the feeling of love, and of disappointment, that was communicated simply with a stern voice and piercing grey eyes. 

This is the woman that delivered Dina’s baby, calm and collected while Ellie panicked, clinging to Dina’s hand like a lifeline. 

The nurse seemed to know the perfect moment to enter, after their tears had dried and as their words were running out. She ushered Dina away, pushing a pack of tissues into her arms. 

Ellie and Dina said their goodbyes with the awkwardness of two people who no longer know how they fit together. And while Dina had responsibilities to take care of in town, a job, a community, a child and a family, Ellie was stuck recovering in the hospital. 

But at the same time, recovering is her goal right now. Recovering, and doing Dina right. 

———

“So what happens next?” Ellie asked softly. 

Dina blinked at her. 

“I don’t know, Ellie…” She sighs, pressing the heel of her palms against her eyes. Ellie understood the motion, as a sympathetic headache pulsing behind her aching eyes. “You mean the world to me but… I don’t know if I can…” 

Dina pauses, taking in a breath. They’d already cried themselves out, and Dina’s voice is raw, her eyes red.

“How do I know you won’t leave again?” 

Whatever barriers had broken down when Ellie returned came back up. Dina’s back straightened, and Ellie saw the woman she’d abandoned almost a year ago. Her dark eyes are resolute, and the broken thing in Ellie aches. 

“I’m not doing this again.” 

Ellie swallows. 

“I’m going to try,” Ellie replies. “I’m going to try the best that I can.” 

It’s not much, but it’s all that she can give. 

Dina stares at her, searching through her eyes. Ellie’s hands fist in the blankets, shaking. 

Then Dina nods. 

“Ok. ” 

————

So Ellie stands before the bathroom mirror, having hobbled there on unsteady feet. Recovering is going to be difficult. She’s always been thin, but never this thin. 

Emaciated is the kindest way to describe her condition. 

Gone are her wiry muscles, flesh sunken and hollow. She feels so fragile, so brittle, and her joints screamed protest at the mere distance between her bed and the cool ceramic she now leans against for support. 

She’s lucky, apparently. According to Cecelia, whose hands are warm as they change her bandages, check the I.V., but whose eyes are dark and wary. Ellie understands, stares at her familiar unfamiliar face in the mirror with that same distrust.

Ellie is back in Jackson, returned crawling on her knees to the community she left, the people she abandoned for selfish reasons. She’s back, but will she stay? Can she stay? 

Lucky. Dehydrated, malnourished, but lucky. Not dead, at least. It’s a small mercy. 

It’s a second chance. 

—————

Within a day, Ellie is released from the infirmary.   
She’s been given orders of bed rest and an incredibly strict diet to get her back up to weight, but despite feeling like a stiff wind could blow her over, she’s in no immediate danger. 

She doesn’t know where she’s going to go. She knows that Dina would take her in, if she asked. She knew it in the desperation with which Dina grasped her hands, in the relief in her voice, even as she let loose all the pain Ellie’s departure had caused her. Dina had proven herself, her love and loyalty, time and time again. 

How do I know you won’t leave again?

It’s time for Ellie to prove herself in return. 

She won’t ask.

She’d burned all her bridges, torched them to dust in an inferno that nearly snuffed her out too. She can’t expect anyone to help her build back from the ashes. It wouldn’t be fair to the corpses she left in her wake. She doesn’t deserve it. 

So Ellie’s surprised, then, when Cecelia walks with her to the infirmary door, and Maria is standing on the door step. 

Cecelia greets her warmly. The nurse hands over the neat list of Ellie’s dietary requirements, and starts to explain her condition, while Ellie herself stands dumbfounded in the doorway. 

The older women stare at her, and Ellie realizes they’d asked her a question when Maria repeats it. 

“You ready to go?” 

—————  
Maria practically built the community of Jackson with her own two hands. She’s not the type to sit idle while the walls collapsed around her, but a woman who took hold of what she could and held on with an unmatched ferocity. 

Ellie remembers the bitterness in her voice, all those years ago, when their search for the Fireflies threatened to take Tommy away from her. She remembers her resignation, when he left on a cross country revenge quest with little more than a note goodbye. 

They took a break, Tommy had said, the day he gave Ellie the information she needed to track Abby down. The push to ruin her life for the sake of empty vengeance. 

What Ellie had done to Dina was little different from what Tommy did to Maria

Maybe Ellie and Tommy weren’t that different, after all. Leaving behind those who loved them, only to feed themselves to the fire of hate. The idea left a bitter taste in Ellie’s mouth. 

But maybe that was Maria’s fatal flaw. Giving people like Tommy, like Ellie, a chance. Loving them, even. 

Ellie stares at Maria, searches the steady gaze of the woman before her. The last of her family, in a way. 

Ellie swallows down her trepidation and follows Maria home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi I took a break on this for a bit. Hope yall have had a good new year.


	5. Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie and Maria.

Maria’s house is empty when they arrive. 

Ellie isn’t sure what she was expecting, but the quiet makes her pause in the doorway. She’s hit with a wave of memories, phantom sensations that crawl up from somewhere buried deep in her chest.

_Joel knocks on the door frame, knuckles white with the cold. He quickly tucks his hands back into his jacket pockets. Her own hands are kept warm by a casserole dish._

_“I know you’d rather hang out with your friends tonight, El, but I’m glad you came” He gives her a smile, and she shrugs it off.Kat had invited her to a bonfire, but standing out in the cold now, Ellie’s glad Joel insisted that she come along to have dinner with Tommy and Maria._

_Tommy opens the door, grinning widely.  
  
“There they are! Come on in, get yourselves out of the cold.”_

_Ellie steps over the threshold into warmth. There’s music gently playing, and she spies Maria in the kitchen as she stirs something on the stove. Tommy pours Joel a glass of something alcoholic, and the two wander off to the living room to chat about his latest home brewing techniques._

_Ellie stands in the entry, snow puddling beneath her scuffed sneakers. She’s still not sure quite where she fits, in Jackson. It’s been so long since she’s been around so many people. This warm home, this idea of family, it’s so foreign to the upbringing she had in Boston._

_Maria joins her, wiping her hands on a towel and rolling her eyes at the men’s antics.  
_

_“Thanks for coming, Ellie.” Maria gently guides her to the kitchen. As she sits with the woman, Ellie thinks she could get used to this._

The air is warm with summer, but somehow, standing in front of the empty home, Ellie feels colder than she did on that early winter evening. 

She starts when a hand tentatively touches her elbow.  


“You ok there, kid?” 

Ellie sways in the doorway. Her mind is untethered, somewhere lost in the girl she used to be. She shakes herself out of it, rubbing her eyes. 

“I’m just tired.” 

————————-

Ellie sleeps straight through her first week back in Jackson, tucked into the small guest room on the first floor of Maria’s house. The months on the road caught up to her with a vengeance, and she barely wakes for the meals that Maria dutifully leaves for her. 

Ellie might have thought, with how thoroughly her choices helped to ruin Maria’s marriage, that Maria would hold something against her. But as the two of them fall into some sort of routine, she senses no ire from the woman. 

Busy as she is, Maria still makes time to spend with her. She hovers close the first few days, conducting meetings from the front room of the house instead of the community center, so that when Ellie emerges, she can help her stumble down the hallway to the bathroom. She gets Ellie out of bed, bundled in blankets, to sit with her at the kitchen table for dinner. 

There’s a wariness in their conversations, a hesitancy born of old hurts. They look at each other and see the people they lost. But at the end of the day, they two of them are still here. 

——————————

Ellie and bedrest are two concepts that do not mix. 

Once her initial fatigue faded, Ellie found herself antsy. She was wired, her brain and body in competition as some restless voice in the back of her head screamed at the thought of sitting idle a moment longer.

Maria returns from errands that afternoon to find her pacing the hallway.

“Ellie, you still need to rest.” Maria scolds her, sternly returning her to the bedroom. 

“I know, I just.” Ellie grips the blankets, “I can’t sit still.” 

Maria considers her for a moment, before placing her hands over Ellie’s. The warmth of the touch stills her, and she takes a breath. 

“I’ll talk to Cecelia.” Maria amended. “She talked about physical therapy, maybe we can get you started sooner than later.”

Ellie frowns, and Maria gives her a small, wry smile in response. 

“You need to take it slow,” Maria places something on the bed, earning a confused glance from Ellie. “I know it’s hard.”

Maria leaves the room, and Ellie looks down to find her journal on the bedside. 

She stares at it a moment, and picks it up. 

——————————

Ellie has never felt that she fit in anywhere.

There was a short period, when they first came to Jackson, where Ellie felt hopeful about their new community. It was overwhelming, to be around so many people who actually seemed to care, but there were kids her age, and she had Joel and Tommy and Maria. 

But the otherness crept in, in the way people stared when she and Kat held hands when they walked through town. In the scar burned into her arm, and the tattoo covering it, a paltry attempt at hiding a secret. 

Every time someone didn’t come back from patrol, Ellie felt guilt.

It helped to stay busy. She made new friends, honed her skills to prove herself eligible for patrols. She had more than Joel, she had Kat and Dina and Jesse. She may not fit into the whole of Jackson, but she fit in with them. She may not have Dina’s charm, or Joel’s wisdom, or Jesse’s easy smile, but they made her niche. 

She felt adrift, now, without them. She didn’t know how she and Jackson fit together. 

—————————

“Ellie.”  
  
Ellie looks up from where she’s sat on the couch, journal in her lap. There’s a spread of books on the table, opened to interesting photos and illustrations. She’s sketching, methodical and aimless, and the pages are punctuated by scribbled out words and phrases. Maria stands in the doorway, beams of the low afternoon sun brightening the gloomy house. 

“It’s lovely outside, do you want to sit on the porch?” 

Ellie settles deeper into the couch, turning her attention back on the book in front of her. She’d never admit it, but she’s been…avoiding the outdoors. In some of her panicked, desperate moments, she yearns for the quiet of the ruins, where the only stares are the empty eyes of the infected. 

She doesn’t know her place in Jackson, now. It was better when she had a role, a job to play, but this slow recovery is torturous. She’d dead weight, who abandoned one of their own, and she’s afraid of what the community thinks of her now. 

The expression of frustration on Maria’s face speaks of the futility of Ellie’s self imposed house arrest. She walks over to help Ellie up from the couch, grabbing her current reference book with a carefully placed finger to keep the page.   
  
“Come on, up you get,” Maria’s voice is stern, marking it as a requirement, not just a request.

Ellie grumbles in response, but lets the firm ministrations guide her out the door. 

—

The sunshine is deepening to orange, and Ellie can’t help but find herself unwinding under the warm rays. She settles into the deck chair as Maria props her book up on the side table, disappearing back inside momentarily to return with two glasses of water. 

“Cecelia will come by tomorrow for a check up,” Maria informed her, as she settled into her chair with a sigh. “She said the sooner you’re safe to be on your feet, the better.”

Ellie nods, fingers playing with the edge of the glass. “Do you know when I can get back onto patrols?” She peeks at Maria under her fringe of hair. 

Maria sighs. “Not until you’re back in shape.” She gives Ellie a stern look. “And that is not permission to push your recovery”.

Ellie huffs, glaring at her feet. She can feel Maria’s considering gaze. The stillness starts to prickle, like a line of ants crawling up her neck. 

“I feel useless,” the words rush out. She twists her hands in her lap. “I’m no good for anyone, like this.” 

“No one is expecting you to jump right back into things,” Maria says.

Ellie only realizes she’s started to hunch into herself when Maria gently places a hand between her shoulder blades. With a smooth voice and warm hands try to ease the tension lacing up Ellie’s spine. 

“You can take all the time you need, Ellie.”

Ellie breathes, instead of trying to explain to Maria that _she can’t, she’s not allowed, how can they let her take more from them without giving anything back?_

She’s so desperate to prove herself. To Dina, to JJ, to Maria, to _Jackson._

But for now they sit, waiting out the sunset, until Maria coaxes Ellie inside to start on dinner. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please pardon the change in chapter title style, the idea i originally had for it doesn't really fit how time is actually moving in the fic. 
> 
> you could say, i dunno what i'm doing, lol
> 
> also a longer chapter today. consistency? i dunno her
> 
> here's a link to my tlou vibes playlist, if yall are interested. anyone got any song recs? 
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3JWbIR0YA0shWXUHnlVCwy?si=vaP2FXafRJO_dN9lYmRqAQ

**Author's Note:**

> I think a lot about what might happen with Ellie and Dina post-TLOU2. Not beta-ed, and I haven't written much in the past 5 years or so, so free shrugs if it's messy. Tags may change, I'm new to posting on ao3.


End file.
